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Apple TV

Anthony wants to know what the advantage is of getting an Apple TV if all the modern TVs are so-called "smart" TVs? Rich says that apps are always better, and updated more on a dedicated device like the Apple TV. Smart TVs, on the other hand, rarely get updated, if ever. TV makers are in the TV business, not the app development business. So Apple TV has that advantage.

Jonathan wants to know how he can find his Apple TV remote. He's frustrated because he loses it all the time. Rich says it's almost always in a seat cushion. The good thing is that iOS 11 supports the Apple TV remote natively, so if he's installed iOS 11, he'll be able to control his Apple TV from Control Center on his phone.

Though it hasn't officially been declared an iPhone event, let's face it, we all know what the September 12th Apple Event is. Leo says it's the worst kept secret in tech. But another noteworthy element to this fall event is that it will be the first event held at the Steve Jobs Theater at the new space ship campus in Apple Park.

Dem has cable and he's been having a lot of digital artifacting and distortion. Could that be due to living too close to a cell tower? Leo says maybe, but then again, it could just be a software issue. He should try rebooting his box, check his connections, all of the things he can do himself. If he's still having that issue, then he can look to his cable company.

Seth used to work in the film industry and the backup storage that they have is up to 10 petabytes of storage and growing. A single film digitized can generate 4TB of space at 5-6K resolution. Leo says that's really not bad because storage is pretty cheap these days for maintaining archives.

Bob has Apple TV and wonders if there's any reason to get Chromecast. Leo says if he already has one, he doesn't need the other. He can get just about everything on the Apple TV now that Amazon Prime is coming to it. The one downside, though, is that Apple TV is only 1080p, but Leo suspects an upgraded next gen Apple TV will have it.

Jerry has a laptop and he wants to know if he can connect his Apple TV to it so he can watch movies. Scott says that if the laptop is a Mac, then AirPlay with the AppleTV will make it easy. If it's a Windows laptop, then Miracast is what Windows supports. Both the laptop and TV have to support it, though.

John wants to stream his grandson's high school graduation to multiple TVs. Leo says that's a tough one because most DLNA systems are only one to one. He could get a Wavecom wireless TV transmitter and then put the receivers on each TV. He can also use Plex and a Roku or Apple TV on each box.

Neil bought a Harmony Hub for his home theater. He streams with Apple TV and a FireTV stick and he's having trouble running Netflix through it. Leo says to make sure the Hub is set to input 4, the TV is set to input 1, and then pair the Harmony app with Apple TV. It could be a limitation of Apple TV that the Harmony can't hook into the audio interface. The only device that would allow him to launch channels through the Harmony Hub is Roku.